The Gilis -- How You Say Island Bliss

(Dec. 22) I know it would be an exaggeration to say that here on Gili Air we have truly reached the other side of the planet, in all things literal and figurative. But, we are getting close. Gili Air is a tiny island, maybe 4 miles around. It sits in the South China Sea about a 4 hour ferry ride east of Bali alongside its island sisters Gili Meno and Gili Trawangan. These tiny islands serve as stepping stones off the coast of Lombok, an Indonesian province that will soon be a rising star for savvy jet setters. Stepping off the longboat that brings us to Gili Air, your personal decompression process begins to take hold. Not that what preceded this destination was stressful, but this place sets the standard for all that is laid back. It is one thing to say that there are no roads here or cars as was the case in Koh Phi Phi, but the difference between Phi Phi and Gili is the difference between New York and Mayberry RFD. There is only a dirt path that hugs the shore around the island, and the only thing that moves faster than the always strolling humans is the occasional pony-drawn cart and a random bike. There are a few bungalow-dotted “resorts,” a string of beach front bars and eateries, and, after that…..nothing.

This is an island devoted largely to divers. There is really nothing else to keep you here except perhaps a driving ambition to lower your blood pressure. No credit cards here, no ATMs. Things here are pretty much a half step ahead of the barter system. Our hotel, Gili Air Bungalows, offers 4 steeply roofed thatched bungalows, each with a front deck and a bathroom in the rear that is open to the sky. Sink, shower, and toilet -- all alfresco. Pretty cool. The pool is salt water as is the tap and shower water. Bottled water is, naturally, essential. The beach bars offer covered, raised thatched platforms each with overstuffed pillows you can lean against while you throw down your Bintang beer and your shrimp or calamari schnitzel. There you can while away the afternoons between dives or after dinner hours, reading, sipping cocktails, playing hearts and trading stories. And the dress code? Let me just say that dressing for dinner means putting a tank top over that bathing suit. And, if you simply insist on footwear, let it be flipflops.

Oh yeah, there’s stress here -- will it be tequila or beer, red snapper or calamari? It really doesn't get much more complicated than that.

Mayhem on Main Street

(Dec. 20) A word about the traffic here. Astounding. Beyond comprehension. There is simply no analog in the western world for this particular brand of hysteria. I grew up thinking that the mad dash urban traffic scenes of Paris and Rome were the benchmarks for madness -- where the rule of law evaporated in the no man’s land beyond the city’s sidewalks. What I didn’t know then was that these traffic models would be mere child’s play -- a stroll in the park -- compared to what southeast Asians engage in every day. To say the streets are crowded goes without saying, of course. The roads are blanketed by cars, trucks, buses, cyclists, and the ever-present scooters and motorcycles that soon take on the feel of swarming mosquitoes rather than machines. Scooters, often loaded with 3 or 4 people, dart among each other and between cars with a hair-raising optimism that their sudden movements will be injury-free. Helmets, though common, are hardly universal. Unhelmeted, small kids, in particular, who are sandwiched (indeed, seemingly suffocated) between parents, appear oblivious to the harm that I believe is not just apt to happen, but a dead on certainty. Cars, like the ones we traveled in, come up on the bumpers of these two-wheeled vehicles so damn closely that so often you can see what kinds of screws hold their license plates on -- and this is at cruising speeds. Add to this mix the suicidal brand of pedestrians who actually deign to enter this war zone and you have the dictionary definition of chaos.

The notion of lanes is not even paid lip service. Are you kidding me? I’m telling you, it’s a huge waste of paint. Sure, there is oncoming traffic. But, that gives no assurance whatsoever that the oncomers own their lane. They must share it with the cars and scooters that pass from the other lane, sometimes three abreast, in what I can only describe as a fiendish game of chicken. I am amazed as much as I have ever been that accidents are not just more frequent, but hellishly repetitive.

It is truly a video game on wheels, but I hesitate to learn in whose hands the controller rests.

A Day in Full

(Dec. 19) Days can be memorable for so many reasons. The one we had today, I suspect, as wonderful as it was in the moment, will become mythic with the passage of time. The major ingredients were all there. It was the first day in virtually a year that Lily, Jesse, Alex and I had been together in one place. With Alex scampering around the globe and Jesse and Laura encamped in Denver, putting us all together in one place was all but impossible. Yet, here we were together again -- a huge delight without more. Add to this that we were all in Bali, and though we had not much more than a day there, it provided an exotic setting for our reunion.

Our day was hinged around a trip up to Ubud, a slow 2 hour journey up into the hills with our driver, Lele. Ubud is known for its crafts and, while we hoped to absorb as much as we could, our day‘s entertainment came from other pursuits. We stop first at Mandala Wisata Wanara Wana, a lengthy Sanskrit denomination for a monkey sanctuary. Here, the inmates (as it were) run the institution. The macaques who reside here run wild and free. If you’re worried about not getting close enough, worry no more. They find you, believe me. All it takes is a bunch of small bananas in hand to bring them running, and they do like their bananas here. If you want one on your shoulder, no problem. You want a grandpa or maybe a baby, they’re yours. What you realize after several minutes is that you’ve taken 900 pictures many of which you just know you’ll want to delete before sharing. But, this is fun without a doubt.

We follow with a trek through rice paddies, a tougher task than we first realized. Our guide, Made (pronounced “Maddy”) takes us down steep slopes through steamy jungle terrain with slippery rocks and dirt, a chore that us flipflop wearing touristas make more difficult than necessary. But, the beauty we witness is incomparable. What is revealed to us, we all agree, is what we had always believed to be the essence of Indonesia: greens so vivid they render the term “technicolor” woefully inadequate; terraced rice paddies that, taken together, provide a stunning landscape mosaic-- so utterly and exclusively Asian. We are dripping from our efforts after the long climb back up to where Lele is to meet us, but we are unanimous in our delight for what we have just come to see.

We stop for lunch at “Indus” recommended by Lele and this special day continues. Spicy calamari salads, an incredibly flavorful lemongrass chicken, and even a paella. All this served on an elevated open air terrace overlooking the rolling Bali countryside. Perfect.

Returning to our hotel, we can’t wait to hit the pool and then have drinks as we watch sunset over the Indian Ocean. Lastly, again at Lele’s suggestion, we are ferried to another part of the city for a grilled fish dinner on the beach at the Ganesha Café. He said it had the best seafood around, and it didn’t disappoint. Grilled red snapper with garlic sauce, all washed down with Bintang beer.

We all regretted having just this one full day in Bali, but as our heads hit the pillow that night, we did not feel cheated.

Scuba

(Dec. 15) After graduating from our rigorous and amusing introduction to breathing underwater in a pool, and having reviewed endless reams of dive instructions and instructional videos, we are now ready for our first open water dive. We go to Maya Bay, site of “The Beach” with Leonardo DiCaprio. Fantastically beautiful, the bay is surrounded by steep, green limestone cliffs evocative of what we imagine pre-historic times to have looked like. In that moment, as we enter the bay, an appearance by a t-rex does not seem utterly out of the realm of possibility. In our longboat, it is just Lily and me, our dive master, Keira, and our boatman. These long, narrow wooden craft you’ve seen a thousand times in movies set in this part of the world.

We submerge. It is hard to keep from smiling. A whole new world reveals itself. Within minutes, we find ourselves circling a sea turtle which is attacking a huge jellyfish from beneath, essentially trying to eat him alive. The jellyfish tries to move away as quickly as nature permits, but his throbbing hulk is no match for the sea turtle. I root for the jellyfish, the underdog, hoping he will miraculously find breakaway speed, but today is not his day.

I delight in new perspectives. Unlike the “horizontal” world where you pass someone either on the left or right, here you have an additional option. Go over or under. How novel! I find myself passing over Lily and a couple of other divers, all arrayed in a vertical plane. As I look down, I feel like I have the barest appreciation for what it’s like to fly in formation with the Blue Angels. Swimming above Lily, I have the absolutely delightful experience of having her air bubbles drift up and past me. They appear as metallic, shiny inverted saucers, reflecting light as clearly as mirrors. I poke them and they break apart into fifty smaller saucers. This is, at heart, a psychedelic experience.

As part of the test for scuba certification, we are asked to jump out of the boat and swim 200 meters to shore. Forgive me, but I think of myself as Leonardo as he and his friends make the desperate swim ashore to “the beach,” just as I am doing in that moment.

Really, I do apologize for this.

Island Life, Thai Style

(Dec. 12) Koh Phi Phi (pronounced “Pee Pee“) is a small island about a 2 hour ferry ride from Phuket. What Disneyland is to 6 year olds, Phi Phi is to a slightly older population. There’s no Donald or Goofy here, and no rides, but if you are, let’s say, 25, all you want is right here. The village is a grid richly crowded with open-air bars with small tables and chairs spilling out onto the “street.” Internet cafes, t-shirt shops, dive shops, massage venues, and an amazing array of eateries fight for your attention. It is an assault on your senses, but not an unpleasant one. As you make your way up the congested walkways, you are invited to all manner of evening parties and shows. All that’s missing is a carnival barker. The streets -- some paved, some not -- give the appearance that Koh Phi Phi is crowded. But, I believe this impression is created only because the walkways -- there are no cars here -- are narrow forcing whoever’s here to share limited walking space. The many locals who try to navigate this maze on bikes are, fittingly, candidates for cirque de soleil. They make 90 degree turns on a dime, routinely stop motionless while remaining upright and somehow (mostly) avoid pedestrians with magical consistency even though those on foot always seem mere centimeters from their front wheels. This task is complicated by the steady infusion of small children, running and biking with no apparent pattern, often without an adult in view. Cyclists gamely blurt out “beep beep” as they make their way through as if fair notice has been given. Really, we are all players in a life-sized video game here.

If there were a flag for Phi Phi it would most certainly feature a large flip flop since that is all you see here. They are not just ubiquitous; they are universal. Ok, ok I did see a couple of guys in worn out running shoes and one eastern european dude wearing combat boots, but these were very much the exception.

Along the alleyways, there is almost always the strains of some music, but not the minor chords of thai music as you might expect. Rather, from somewhere, you hear the voices of Cat Stevens, Bob Marley and Janice Joplin. It’s weird, but somehow it fits. This theme picks up at the Millie and Tia Sunflower Beach Bar on the sand on the other side of the island. It doesn't take too much imagination to picture this place in Key West, or maybe San Diego. You take a seat at one of the curved carved tables facing the ocean, Singha beer in hand, awaiting the sunset. Stray cats jump up on your table. The longboats are now dormant providing a picture postcard foreground for the sunset that is soon to appear painting the sky in the reddest reds and the bluest blues. The ambient music is all acoustic, naturally. My camera does not even remotely do justice to all this.

This is a beer commercial, right?

Paradise Lost

(Dec. 10) There are few things as sweet as being reminded of a wonderful, but long ago, experience. Sometimes this is triggered by smells (maybe the cooking of some cherished comfort food), or sounds (like hearing a song that once had great meaning). But, most often, and most powerfully, the sensation is the greatest when you return to a place that holds some of your warmest memories. And, so it was yesterday with Lily and me. We found ourselves in the same exact spot we had not seen for 30 years: Patong Beach in Phuket, Thailand.

The interesting thing, I think, about these encounters is trying to resist re-living the experience since, after all, so many things have changed. You can “re-acquaint” but you cannot “re-live.” Here, in Phuket, we knew things would be different. But, would it matter? What was once a relatively undiscovered backwater unknown to most of the western world, was now a bustling, crowded destination resort polka-dotted by high rises and replete with wave upon wave of European tourists, tattoo parlors, and the ubiquitous t-shirt shops. Hello civilization; goodbye paradise. This was a far cry from the place we once knew that promised on the beach bungalows for $6 a night and grilled fresh fish dinners for $3. But, when you looked seaward, out into the Andaman Sea, we could see what we loved so much: fluffy white sand, water as warm as a bath, and a succession of changing tints of blue -- like a blue rainbow -- from almost clear to turquoise to the deepest navy. The crescent-shaped bay was still guarded by green hills diving down to the shoreline. And, the hot sun served as an open invitation to spend the day submerged in that wonderful water.

We returned to the place that we had once stayed, Phuket Cabanas, now completely transformed into an upscale and beautiful hotel, and had cocktails at sunset and a fabulous alfresco Thai dinner. The starter was a soup so beautifully aromatic it could do well in a perfume competition. The catch? It was laced with paralyzingly hot chilies that, as they say, cures what ails you. Not for the timid, this soup. What followed was everything from red snapper to chicken to shrimp to a seafood salad of shrimp, octopus and ginger. All of it fabulously delicious.

So, it wasn’t the old Phuket. So what? We're not the old Lily and Jeff either.

When Are We?

(Dec. 9, although possibly Dec. 8 or 10) Lily and I have had our fannies firmly planted in airline seats for 22 hours today. Count ‘em: 22 -- Charleston to Dulles (1 hour), Dulles to Tokyo (13½ hours), Tokyo to Singapore (7½ hours). Trust me, our fannies are not pleased with this arrangement, and our backs aren’t entirely thrilled either. Like so many others, we have experienced this before -- these long trips -- which tells you how strong the pull is of our chosen destination that we would endure this numbing, voluntary incarceration. We mentally wave out our window at Ontario, the Yukon, the Northern Slopes of Alaska, the Aleutians, Vladivostok, Okinawa, Guam, and Borneo. From 35,000 feet, it’s all the same. We not only endure, but look forward to, the airline’s less than elegant attempts at food service since, if nothing else, it provides a break in the otherwise totally stalled and bland action of air travel.

It is a matter of some hilarity that we attempt, futilely, to figure out what time it is, which is, of course, impossible. Time is a moving target up here. Do we look at our watches and say to ourselves it’s 5 p.m. when that’s eastern standard time, or do we keep track of the ever-changing time zones below? Like the intrepid, but confused, heroes in “Lost,” it is far better not to ask “where are we?,” but rather “when are we?”

Walking the aisles at “night” in our jumbo jet, it is amusing to see how others meet the challenge. There are, of course, the stubborn few with open books or laptops, and others watching, glazed over, their sixth movie. Mostly, folks try -- vainly, I believe -- to find a position where sleep will provide a much needed escape from this seemingly endless monotony. You have your folks with sleep masks, face masks, and many others with blankets pulled over their heads. Others appear as comfortable as one might when bracing for a head-on collision, but with their eyes closed, as if by jamming their eyelids shut they can force unconsciousness upon themselves. Some say you should set your watch to that of your destination and start adjusting to that when you take your seat. Yeah, good luck with that.

Oh, the joy! After a 6 hour layover in Singapore, we head out in the early a.m. again, only this time for another multi-hour aerial hike, this time to Phuket.

I’m thinking even Cary Grant would look a bit disheveled after this, don’t you?

The Last Man on Earth (or so it seemed)

Around these parts, once the last suggestion of summer leaves for more southern climes, folks around here perform an exodus as if they were fully expecting an imminent, winter-long convention of mastodons and t-rex at Wild Dunes. To say this place becomes a ghost town is, in truth, doing a disservice to ghosts because this place would make even ghosts feel a tad lonely. We are told that one-quarter of property owners live here full-time, but I’m convinced either that this is a grotesque overstatement or these guys are most comfortable riding out winter in their basements, far from human view, madly at work on the great American novel or, perhaps, a challenging video game.

So -- tonight, as Mojo and I took our evening constitutional, I was struck by the notion that it would not be such a reach to play the role as last man on planet earth. We wandered empty street after empty street, and as the twilight gave way to darkness, I was reminded again how resoundingly black it gets here with street lights appearing maybe once every half mile. We ventured down to the ocean because from a block away you could hear the waves crashing, and this was most certainly worth a view. It was the kind of sound that made you think that something important was happening there. There was but one soul on the beach, a truly forlorn looking cyclist leaning into the wind, which was now just a bit shy of furious. He could not have been enjoying himself. Otherwise, the expanse was free of any life form. Just the waves, the sand, the full moon and Mojo and me. The day had played out in a way that invited this air of isolation as the weather gurus spoke of high winds, pounding rain, flooding, severe thunderstorms, and even some tornado warnings. It was a day best suited to browsing Amazon.com in search of a well-priced ark.

While the streets were empty, there were actually a few cars that ventured by, their lights an annoying distraction from my last man on earth fantasies. An intrusion, really. May I say that Mojo could not have been more pleased? Or, that he could not have been more oblivious to the encroaching darkness which made him all but invisible. As usual, he pranced through our entire human-free walk, leash firmly planted in his mouth as if to make sure I understood that it was he, not I, who was taking the other for a walk.

As serene and uncomplicated as this walk was, I would not wish for this experience every night. I am far too social for that. I enjoy the repartee with total strangers, some with dogs, some without. It doesn’t matter.

I do not want to be the last man standing, thank you very much.